Every society you build will have its fringes, and on the fringes of every society, heroic and restless vagabonds will wander, with their wild and virgin thoughts, only able to live by preparing ever new and terrible outbreaks of rebellion!
Renzo Novatore
We are writing this text to all anarchists and rebels, in and out of prison walls throughout the world, in response to the international call for a week of actions for anarchist prisoners (August 23–30). A coordination of actions through calls of this type is needed, all the more so at the international level, urging individualities and collectives to act as they can and feel, and to express and diffuse the anarchist struggle for liberation. However, we should not depend on only these calls to get our voices heard and our actions shown. So, taking for granted that we are at a raging war, and having chosen this side, we are confronted with an enemy who has every means to beat us in our every step of attack. Armies, cops, control technology with cameras, advanced surveillance, storage of DNA samples and fingerprint profiles, the media, and so many other institutions and mentalities constitute domination that we are hostile to. In this war, the only certain thing is that we will have prisoners, or even victims, and that’s where the verification of the battle itself lies.
We are going through a period in which the Greek State has captured dozens of anarchists in its prisons for their acts against domination. Prison has not managed and will never succeed in bending the morale and the fighting temper of anarchists, and this is shown by their daily dignified attitude in the cells of democracy but also the struggles they give behind bars. “Innocence” and “guilt” is a fake distinction that only applies to the arsenal of the State.
Within the framework of generalized repression, the bill on the type C prisons and the new special conditions of detention was passed during the summer, following the American and European standards for crushing the dignity of prisoners. Without losing time, the authorities have already started the first transfers of inmates from the hellhole of Domokos to other prisons, emptying the prison of Domokos to convert it into a maximum security facility, and the first prisoners to be held there will be anarchists and urban guerrilla fighters.
The more the stranglehold of prison is tightened, the more their democracy and correctional system reproduce a death in doses, pulling us into the lethe in terms of our individual freedom and true living.
Cops, judges, prison guards and their throng, troglodytes in bondage to their democracy, enslaved to their own misery, consumers of useless goods which domination offers generously, are going through an everyday death in terms of cancerous life. Holders of senior positions, who take advantage of their authority, are trying to recast a lower kingdom of nationals who dream of grandeur just like them. They forge the human mind to become a suitable mold for casting artificial values and institutions, pushing humans into apathy through the media, the drugs, the generalized consumer culture, through religion and patriotism, holding the individual away from thinking and acting on their desires. Drowned in inertia, humans choose to stupefy themselves, undergo the 8-hour brutalizing slavery, nourish themselves on contrived notions, cling to addictions of the system, and be enslaved to a predetermined life before a certain and idle death.
Rebels who have no horizon beyond the walls of their coercions are also introverts in their nonexistence. Seeing oneself through the perspective of coercions means that one accepts the direction set by Power, thus either accepting or merely repelling it. Insurrection must aim for the total destruction of Power; nothing less than everything is enough for us.
Domination wages war on all fronts, destroying not only human lives but also launching an onslaught to enslave non-human animals and the nature, so our answer must also be on all fronts aiming at total liberation. Partial struggles have their own importance; however, nothing will be free until all are free.
One thought on “Greece: A few words related to the call for a week of actions in solidarity with anarchist prisoners”
Domination wages war on all fronts, destroying not only human lives but also launching an onslaught to enslave non-human animals and the nature, so our answer must also be on all fronts aiming at total liberation. Partial struggles have their own importance; however, nothing will be free until all are free.